The Obama Administration is committed to ensuring strong protection from environmental and health hazards for everyone, including those living in communities that are overburdened by pollution. Every federal agency has a unique and important role to play in ensuring that all communities receive the health and environmental protections they deserve. To that end, each Environmental Justice Interagency Workgroup (EJ IWG) agency is posting an environmental justice strategy on its website for public comment. This release is the latest step in a continued Administration-wide effort to elevate the environmental justice conversation and address potential disproportionate environmental and health effects on low-income, minority and tribal communities pursuant to Executive Order 12898. Last September, Administrator Jackson and Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley reconvened the EJ IWG for the first time in more than a decade.
Last December at the White House Environmental Justice Forum, cabinet level officials and a wide range of federal agency representatives met with over one hundred environmental justice and community based leaders to discuss issues that are affecting overburdened communities.
In August, EJ IWG agencies signed the ?Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898? (EJ MOU) and formally agreed to certain environmental justice commitments. Among them, each federal agency agreed to post an environmental justice strategy on its website for public comment.
Federal agencies are currently posting their environmental justice strategies as required by the EJ MOU. Links to these strategies can be found at http://1.usa.gov/t4Tppr
If you would like to submit a comment about an agency?s strategy, you may use the comment box on the website above or comment directly through the appropriate agency’s website.
After each federal agency receives and reviews public comments on its environmental justice strategy, it will finalize its environmental justice strategy next year.